Out of the Storm
by Thalia Kendall
Summary: Written in answer to a challenge, this has another of my obscure ships AngelinaMontague. An unlikely protector, a change of perception, and a few moments of desperation in chaos. Oneshot.


A/N: Written for a challenge set by Scribbulus, in which two characters, at least one of whom must be a virgin, are to shag, and the line "I don't want to die a virgin" must be used. Acknowledgements must go out to all of my friends for their awesome support, but especially to Sky, for the help and encouragement. Dedication shoutouts to Ray and Sara (the two other shippers I know), and t00by loff to everyone else. 

Disclaimer: Rowling created them. I am just bringing them out of faceless oblivion.  


* * *

Thunder crashed around her and the cold November rain fell like icy deprecations from the heavens, but the woman ran on, her robes sodden with the water, her dark hair streaming down her back. She didn't look up as she wrenched the gates open. She didn't look back. 

When a young man walked out to check the wards, upright, solemn, in neatly austere dark blue robes hit with an _Impervious_ charm, he caught sight of the woman fleeing towards him, and for a moment he drew his wand in defense until realizing who it was. He walked towards her, a bit incredulous, and a moment later found himself with his arms full of sodden former enemy, a suspicion that it wasn't just rain running down her face, and as he lifted her without a word, he realized that someone else might have to check the wards that night.

It was the bitterest of ironies as he walked through the castle doors, carrying her in his arms, and wordlessly passed shocked students who paused to watch, their eyes widening in recognition when they saw who it was, her head tipped back and her usually vivacious face weary and worn. No one could really understand why he was carrying her¡ªwasn't it but a year ago when they glared and sneered and shoved each other in the air? But now, her dark, wet hair hung limply over his arm, running like ink, and he didn't look at her face when he walked towards the Headmaster's office.

Dumbledore got the story out of her--a tale of wand blasts and screams and people falling, and the gray-bearded old man wordlessly took her in, leading her to a guest chamber and patting her slender shoulder. She slept that night with the aid of a Dreamless Sleep Potion, and it wasn't until morning when she realized who her heroic rescuer was. 

She walked up to him a bit slowly, fading dread replaced with new suspicion in her narrowed eyes. "What are you _doing_ here?"

The expression in his dark blue eyes, stormy like an overcast night sky, was nowhere near friendly when he crossed his arms and stared down at her. "I'm working," he replied laconically. The quirk of his lips were almost a sneer, and she reflected that she would have preferred someone else, anyone, to have carried her in. The idea that she still had to thank him out of principle¡­ her lips thinned involuntarily.

"Good day, Johnson," he said coolly, and walked away to spare her the necessity.  
  


* * *

A quick, vague question to her former Head of House, and she was told that her former rival had been stationed in Hogsmeade following the ghastly poisonings of a few months back-- the Magical Law Enforcement Squad had sent one of their forensic specialists to investigate, and at the urging of Dumbledore and the permission granted by the head of his department, he had stayed, the Hogwarts Headmaster offering him a room in the castle as he spent most of his days patrolling in Hogsmeade, a quiet, saturnine presence. Angelina didn't know whether she was disgusted or amused at what the younger students thought of him. The third-year Hufflepuff on the Reserve Chaser squad for her team giggled a bit nervously when Mr. Montague was mentioned, and considered him some sort of dashing, byronic hero, even if his manner was far too reserved and serious for comfort. 

"I always feel like I'm doing something wrong," Rose Zeller would whisper to the former Head Girl, nominally reinstated as an assistant to Madame Hooch, "Mr. Montague would be far more handsome if he smiled once in a while."

Angelina would scowl a bit and remember icy glares across the Quidditch pitch and a hand squeezing hers so tightly that her fingertips tingled afterwards. And then she would remember, somewhere buried in a secret part of her subconscious, that rainy November night and collapsing, fragile like she rarely ever was, about to break, into his arms. And he had caught her and carried her like she was made of glass and gossamer and there had been no strikes or bruises or even words. They had not touched at all since, and then she would feel her face heat up, shocked at herself for thinking about _touching_ and _him_, of all people.

He never smiled in her presence, and she hated being looked down at from his superior height and addressed with a minimum of notice. On the nights that he renewed the wards surrounding Hogwarts as she coached some team or another in Quidditch, sometimes they would meet and quarrel and her dark eyes would flash with rage as his gaze smouldered with ire. She sincerely hated his stuck-up, "I don't have to deign to speak to you inferior beings" attitude and the way he smirked at her when he won an argument. She couldn't understand why he never reacted to the stories of horror in the news-- the murders, the burnings, the Dark Mark floating in the black-and-white pictures. Cold, unfeeling bastard. 

"Do you have ice water instead of blood in your veins?" she hissed at him one day.

He turned and gave her a sardonic look, what would almost have qualified as a smile had it not been so cynical. "Is _that_ what everyone's fighting and dying over, then? Ice water?" He leaned towards her, and reached out a hand, quick as a snake, grasping her hand, not hard enough to bruise this time. Their fingers lined up, his slightly paler than hers, similarly callused, with long, tapering fingers and knobby knuckles and a small scar as if from a burn on the back. "If it comforts you to think that we're not human like you lot, go right on ahead."

And then he had let her go and by the time she'd caught her breath, inhaled, and expelled it, he was halfway down the hall.

She was slightly more polite after that, but the conversation was still kept to a minimum, and today, oddly on the event of a Slytherin/Gryffindor Quidditch game, they sat next to each other, ramrod straight, watching in the stands as Emma Dobbs and Ginny Weasley shook hands with each other in the middle of the pitch. If there was animosity between these two captains, they were quiet about it and dignified, blank. Angelina watched as green and red took to the air, and ignored the fact that her sleeve was brushing against _his_.

It felt odd to be in a state of civility with him during a _Quidditch_ game.

They seemed to have reached some sort of accord, because he cheered for the Slytherins and she for the Gryffindors and it seemed to be all right. When Malcolm Baddock fouled Natalie McDonald and scored amidst boos from the Gryffindors, she called out her displeasure along with the others and if he were smirking, she didn't notice it.  
  
She did notice, however, that vaguely, over the din of the game, there were some strange rumblings coming from the direction of the Forbidden Forest.   
  
It was during a slight lull in the game that he suddenly stood, an incantation on his lips and a look of alarm on his face. getting to his feet so quickly that Yseult Vector, sitting next to him, started in consternation and tried to tug him back down in his seat.  
  
The wards that had been put up were strong-- meticulously woven, but there are some forms of Dark Arts that just could not be stopped.  
  
Even as the first of the shadowy black army had started to storm in, he had cast a temporary blocking spell, and suddenly understanding, Angelina grabbed the magical megaphone from the hands of a wide-eyed Kevin Whitby.  
  
Even as the Quidditch team abruptly lowered to the ground, the Gryffindor and Slytherin captains ironically both barking out simultaneous orders for their teams to organize the fleeing students into the castle even as Prefects and teachers scrambled to get everyone to safety, he took her hand, running down the stands at a giddy pace, shouting out spells at every step. She recognized the wards, of course, and despite their ultimate futility, she reinforced them with her own, a cloud of crackling sparks filling the air as they desperately wrung out each second of time they could buy for the others, wards being broken by ferocious Death Eaters as quickly as they were put up.  
  
And she gave a soft scream as a determined, deranged masked woman at the front of the army waved her wand in a grand motion, wards shimmering pale gold and thinning like vapour in the air, and he paused for the briefest of moments to gaze into her face.  
  
Her lips were trembling in terror, eyes wide with the memory of screams and spells and bodies falling, and they had no time-- they were doomed as it was, the castle several feet too far. Wordlessly scooping her up in his arms again, he quickly changed direction for the nearest structure, vivid glimpses of her red and gold scarf visible through the curtain of her dark hair. And then even as the Death Eaters stormed the field, the door to the broomshed slammed shut behind his back and he sat her unceremoniously down on a Quidditch chest, his eyes glittering down at her slender hands, skin the colour of pale brown sugar, knuckles milk-white as her fingers clenched around handfuls of his robe. His face was quite close to hers.  
  
"Stay here, Angelina," a note of urgency quickened his breath even as sounds of battle arose outside, faculty and the Aurors that worked for Dumbledore meeting the attackers head-on. She was rigid with the terrors of the past, and shook her head wordlessly as he tried to loosen her grip on his robes. "I have to go." He had far less to lose, really.  
  
Angelina remembered the burning homes and the charred fingers closed around a blackened wand, the mother and child wrapped in a macabre final embrace, the diabolical laughter that had followed her, echoing in her ears like a deathwatch, tumbling off her broom in exhaustion as she dove down towards the wild heath, and the rain that fell like her tears as she continued fleeing on foot. And then she remembered her hands bracing against a warm body and closing her eyes in exhaustion as strong arms carried her to safety. He shook her out of her reverie and made for the broomshed door as screams reverberated outside.  
  
"NO!" she reached out and grabbed his hand, fast as a feline, her fingers brushing against the skin of his wrist and the fabric of his cuffs. Perhaps later she would feel the shock of her choice, but now she didn't care that her protector was a former nemesis. "Stay with me," she pleaded. "Don't leave me."  
  
He tried to shake loose her grip, explanations and impersonal reassurances on his lips, but she pulled herself up and rapidly moved her hands upwards, sliding under his arms to find purchase around his waist, and his eyes were filled with consternation and something else as she shivered against him, stifling something that sounded suspiciously like a sob.  
  
He would later tell himself that it wasn't building madness, but preservation, that made him consent and walk backwards, holding her like a child, nonsensical soothing words on his lips. After all, she would have drawn attention to their hideout, and he didn't want them to die. But she wasn't supposed to bury her face in his neck, damp cheeks soft against his chin and eyelashes brushing against his throat, as he held her in his lap, in this darkened world of brooms and balls that had been the base of their hatred.  
  
A hatred that had been growing more and more tenuous, harder to recall or remember why. She shook like the splintery wooden walls around them as the shed rocked with the sounds of screams and clashes, and he wordlessly put up ward after ward to encase them, whispering incantations into her hair as his wand arm ached with the exertion. Finally, his voice hoarse and his arm sore, he gazed down into her eyes to see how she was, and he had no time...  
  
Because all of the sudden, she had shifted in his lap, cupping his face in her hands and pressing her lips to his, kissing him with a fiery desperation. Gryffindors always seemed to feel so much...  
  
For moments, she might have been kissing marble, but even as a thunderous quake rocked the broomshed, he kissed her back, fingers gripping her hips so that she was straddling his lap, her arms around his neck as her knees rested on either side of his hips. She gave a whimper, not entirely of fear now, and not too far off, he heard a maniacal call of _Avada Kedavra_.   
  
This wasn't supposed to happen, and they were supposed to hate each other, but for whatever reason that everything was wrong, they were kissing like they'd been lovers for years, his lips trailing from the corner of her mouth to her jaw and effortlessly finding every spot that made her moan. It wasn't supposed to happen like this, and it wasn't supposed to be them, or here, and even as fast as this thought reached his mind, it was driven out as she shifted her hips against him, their bodies pressed together from shoulders to legs.   
  
She moaned as his hands roamed up her sides, his lips parting over a hollow of her throat, and her own hands moved restlessly towards the fastenings of his robes. And then, even as she managed to work open his outer robe between countless dizzying kisses, there was the sound of an explosion and a scream in a voice so high and cold that it hurt their ears, and then a symphony of phoenix song.  
  
They jerked their heads up, startled and wondering what had just happened, when the sound faded into a deafening silence, and they stared owlishly into each other's eyes in the darkness, blue and brown meeting and locking in a blaze of something undefined.  
  
Her blouse was half-unfastened and she had just moved her hands towards the buttons on his shirt when the roof of the broomshed gave an ominous creak, and he stared up to see a splintered beam.  
  
"We need to get out of here," he told her roughly, not even bothering to straighten out her robes into a state of decency now as he ran towards the door, her arms still wrapped around her neck. "We can't do this."  
  
"Sol," No one had shortened his first name before, and this was certainly the first time she'd used it at all, her voice muffled against his shoulder as they moved towards the door. She mumbled something against his robes that he couldn't hear.   
  
He kicked the door of the broomshed open, and the roof gave one last groan before it collapsed with the creak and smash of cracked beams, and he just barely shoved her out of the way-- the first ungentle touch since they had met again.  
  
She screamed and scrabbled, fingers digging into the dirt as she pulled, her eyes widening at the sight of his arm-- blood from a gash caused by splintering wood staining his sleeve. His face remained stoical and he grasped her wrist with his good arm, the two of them fleeing through the crowd of triumphant Aurors for safety, every step seeming further and further away as his blood continued to fall, even if his grip on her wrist didn't loosen.  
  
They were met by a frantic Madame Pomfrey inside the door, and even as she forced him onto a stretcher and moved him towards the Transfiguration classroom-- extension of the hospital wing now, he gazed up at her anxious face. "Whatever you were saying earlier," he whispered, "I didn't hear. You'll have to repeat yourself later."  
  


* * *

It was dawn before everyone had returned to the castle who had come from it. And then it was evening again when the lists of names were finalised. It was the next day that the Ministry came over, his unsmiling colleagues leading away several formerly masked men and women in chains.   
  
But Angelina didn't know any of this, because she had sat numbly by the bedside of someone she was supposed to hate, her eyes terrible and fixed as he lay still, his cheek painfully cool under her palm. And it was only a Dreamless Sleep Potion slipped into her food that enabled a weary Madame Pomfrey to transport her back to her own rooms, the old woman murmuring something about unlikely love.  
  
Montague awoke three days later, his muscles sore from disuse and his arm bandaged. The battle was over-- the war had been won, and the extraneous duties of patrolling Hogwarts and Hogsmeade were-- at an end.  
  
He was quiet as the Headmaster personally paid him a visit and escorted him back to his rooms, and while he accepted the old man's thanks and avoided the too-perceptive blue eyes, he indicated that he would prefer to be left alone. He would have to pack, certainly, and there were some questions that persisted in his head, possibly never to be answered.  
  
He had just started to put away his clothes when there came a knock on the door, and when he unlocked it, his enemy walked in with an uncharacteristically timid gait, her dark hair swinging behind her back and her face solemn. There was a lack of the fiery antagonism of an older time. She seemed softer somehow, or perhaps that was his perception, after protecting her.  
  
"I'll be leaving," he remarked awkwardly by way of a greeting. "My job is done."  
  
She nodded wordlessly, sitting down next to him on the bed. She, too, had no reasons to stay now. Her lips were set in a straight line as he carefully folded up his shirts, his left arm still a bit stiff from the wound. Suddenly, he looked at her.  
  
"What was it that you were trying to tell me the other day, Angelina?"  
  
She stared at him fixedly for a moment, as if debating something internally, before she reached her arms around him, leaning her head against his shoulder like the other day except far more gentle. He held her and didn't even think about it, and for a few moments, they stayed locked in a strange, unforeseen embrace, and he felt an odd clench in his chest.   
  
"I thought we were going to die," she whispered against his neck, kissing his warm skin. "And what I said was that I didn't want to die a virgin."  
  
By the time he'd processed the significance of those words, her lips had been pressed to his, warm and sweet like cinnamon, and he barely recognized his own voice when he replied huskily against her lips, gently leaning her back against the pillows and locking the door of the room with a charm. "You won't die a virgin, and you deserve to be treated with care on a proper bed for a first time."   
  
Her fingers sliding up his chest towards the buttons of his shirt, she felt herself break into a smile at that. 


End file.
